By now you’ve heard the good news, because when it was announced, the internet freaked the f-ck out: Twin Peaks is returning for a nine-episode run on Showtime in 2016. And depending on who you are, you have a lot of questions. The practical among you are probably wondering how they could ever hope to resolve that killer cliffhanger now that actor Frank Silva has died. The conspiratorially minded will be asking if executive producers David Lynch and Mark Frost were planning this comeback since the show first went off the air. Or, if you are one of my co-workers, you may just be asking, “What’s Twin Peaks?”

If you fall into the third camp, this post, which is adapted from my response to my co-worker, is for you:

You asked about the show Twin Peaks yesterday, and I wish I had been able to give you a more succinct description that properly captured how compelling this weird and memorable show is.

The show is equal parts murder mystery, quirky comedy, surreal nightmare and soap opera. The plot kicks off with an honest, open-hearted, slightly odd FBI agent traveling to a remote northwestern town to investigate the grizzly death of a beloved local prom queen. The town is filled with off-beat, funny characters and gives off an idyllic charm, but as he pulls back the curtains on this beautiful little slice of America, he reveals a surreal and withered soul.

A lot of TV shows have been inspired by some aspect of it or another—The X-Files wouldn’t have had FBI agents investigating supernatural and alien activity in remote locations without Twin Peaks; Desperate Housewives wouldn’t have taken a cynical look at suburban utopia through the lens of satirizing soap operas without it; some of Lost‘s most striking images came straight from it, too—but no TV show had ever tried to bring together all of the styles and tones of Twin Peaks and no one has ever attempted it since.

It was roughly 28 episodes long. It was messy. It was impenetrable. It was hilarious. It was frightening. It gave us some of the most bizarre images TV has ever produced. And it was awesome.

The weirdest thing: It was on normal, broadcast TV.

Of course, it only lasted two seasons.

It was spearheaded by acclaimed film director David Lynch, whose affable, aw-shucks demeanor belies the fact that he is a master of surreal horror and nightmare logic. (As evidence, I offer this simple scene from his film Lost Highway. Here’s hoping you don’t watch it alone.)

The fact that the revival is only nine episodes long and Lynch is directing all nine episodes of them is good news: The show’s first, abbreviated season is universally regarded as its best. Its focus blurred and its quality dropped when Lynch took a less active role in its longer second season.

Nine episodes directed by David Lynch on Showtime in 2016. Other than that, we don’t know much. David Lynch and producer Mark Frost are contacting actors to verify their availability, but even that isn’t a guarantee of who will be involved.

For now, all we can do is hope that David Duchovny makes a triumphant return.

If you’re interested in learning more about my personal insecurities, finding a foothold on the steep slopes of Doctor Who or just complaining about those darn millennials and their cell phones, you may be interested in an article I just wrote for The Wheelhouse Review. Head on over to read more about how Doctor Who‘s recent season premiere is basically the same experience as a trip to a bookstore or a 20-something’s failed relationship.

George Saunders is a great writer, but we should take his stories of corporate culture as cautionary tales, not something to which to aspire.

Satya Nadella isn’t a household name, but when he did his best Jerry Maguire impression last week— writing a long missive and sending it to everyone in his company—he set a certain, nerdy corner of the internet astir. (That’s the kind of thing that happens when the memo implies business decisions that would require big layoffs and the guy writing it is CEO of Microsoft.)

However, as you might expect from the tech company that is most closely associated with the stereotypes of corporate America, the language he used to try to get people excited for whatever his vision for the future of their company is left a lot to be desired.

According to former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gasse, it didn’t need to be that way. Gasse’s response is more than just a(n appropriately) concise prescription for how Nadella’s language could have been improved—it’s also a quick look at some of the root causes of poor communication in corporate speak. (Spoiler alert: He thinks muddled language is often the result of muddled thought.)

When I tell people I meet at parties that I work for a church, they respond with polite confusion. And I get it. I don’t come off as a pastor or a church mouse.

I’m saturated in culture and pop culture. I speak quickly, loudly and without patience for small talk. If we’re talking about the latest season of Hannibal and the conversation can’t veer into how the show engages your worldview, I’m likely to suddenly realize I have to go check in with someone across the room. I have a New Englander’s lack of pretense: If we’re talking about what fiction you’re reading and I don’t approve of the author, I’ll probably forget to hide my disgust.

I also have a New Yorker’s obsession with professional excellence: I’ve gotten a congressional district to switch parties, I’ve written ad copy for products that cost more than most Americans make in a year and I have a hard time settling for messaging that isn’t as clear and compelling as it could possibly be.

Pictured: Splash page for the three churches. (New logos in development.)

So why do I love working for a church? They aren’t usually known as bastions of cultural relevance and creative expertise.

It’s not just because I’ve gone three years without trying to make people angry or get them to give me money (though that’s usually the first thing I bring up when people ask me how I enjoy my work). And it’s not just because I have flexible hours (though for a night owl with ADHD, that is a tremendous benefit).

Campaigns were more exciting. NGO work was more academically engaging. Copywriting let me write a whole lot more. But over the past three years, I’ve overseen the launch of websites, blogs and proprietary social platforms. I’ve written social media strategies and overseen the development of print pieces from concept to final distribution. And I’ve never once had a meeting dedicated to increasing click-through rates.

Using the tools of branding, design and communications on behalf of a family of churches has demanded that I subject my skills to a level of philosophical interrogation that campaigns or NGOs have never matched.

When you’re working for a campaign or for a non-profit, your end goal is always very clear: More. Get more press coverage. Guarantee more votes. Secure more donations. And that’s the direction toward which almost all of the advice about how to use the tools of marketing and communications is bent.

But my operating mandate working for this group of churches hasn’t been more—it’s been better. It’s been clearer. Not once in the last three years have I been asked, “How can we get more readers?” or, “How can we attract more followers?” The questions driving my work have been more along the lines of: How can we more clearly and practically explain ourselves? How can we help people who are on the margins feel safer and more welcome? How can we help those who are deeply engaged become better neighbors, better friends, better parts of our city?

Figuring out how to use tools that are traditionally used for the sake of “more” toward the end of “better” has been rewarding and refreshing, and our strategic roadmap shows that there’s still a lot of exciting potential ahead, yet I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep working here: Being a one-man department is taxing; the fact that increasing our revenue stream isn’t an institutional priority means my budget will always be frustratingly small; and the faster pace of work elsewhere in this city is bound to tempt me away eventually.

But if someone in marketing, PR or communications ever asks if they should consider working for a church, I’d say yes without hesitation or reservation. I’ve been working full-time since I was 14, and this just might be the best job I’ve ever had.

Today has been the highest-ever traffic day for Vision of the City, a separate blog I maintain for the sake of occasionally tossing out conversation fodder for folks who like to think and talk about the intersection of Christian faith and civic life. If that sort of thing is your bag, then head over to Vision of the City for some quick thoughts on a telling transition a Christian radio figure recently made between two topics.

For everyone else, I’m finally going to watch the How I Met Your Mother finale tonight, so I’m sure some thoughts on that will be coming your way later this week.

The paper notebook is one of the best technologies ever developed: You can mind map, outline, write, sketch and more—all within one high-resolution, immediate-response interface. Being able to do all of that on a computer requires several suites of programs and specialized hardware. (I use OpenOffice, MindNode, Scrivener, Adobe Illustrator, a Wacom tablet and more.)

What pen and paper offer in flexibility and freedom, though, they take back in access and convenience. I can’t carry all of my old notebooks with me at all times. If I’m at work and want to remember something from a project I worked on a month ago, I’m out of luck—by now, that notebook is tucked away on a shelf behind my desk at home.

The go-to solution for a lot of people is Evernote—it’s the darling of most people who want on-the-go access to their information. And it does offer great access to your information from anywhere at any time. However, Evernote has a cumbersome interface for creating new notes compared to the simple, flexible elegance of pen and paper. And entering information directly into Evernote also locks you into a linear, rich-text-based interface—sketches, charts, diagrams and mind maps aren’t an option.

There have been a few attempts to marry the flexibility of marking up a sheet of paper with the convenience of on-the-go access to your old notes, but they all fall short. Smart pens, sensor-loaded notebook cases and page scanners all let you still use a pen and paper, and then offer systems for downloading digital copies of each page in your book. But these tools generally require adding too many extra steps to the process between using your notebook and having local, digitized notes. And even when you use them as intended, you still blow through notebook after notebook in quick succession.

What we really need is a way to automatically make our hand-written notes and hand-drawn sketches available on the go that doesn’t add extra steps to a workflow. We need a way to build a digital archive of notes and sketches with a process that’s as simple as “Take out your pen and write.” And if we can do it without burning through notebooks, that would be a plus.

Enter the eWriter

A month ago, I ordered the Boogie Board Sync, the flagship of Improv Electronics’ “eWriter” line.

Improv Electronics’ Boogie Board eWriters are built around a bi-stable LCD display, similar to the Kindle’s e-ink screen. It’s a static physical display rather than a constantly refreshing electronic display, so looking at it is as easy on the eyes as looking at a page in a book.

Using a stylus, you sketch or write on the Boogie Board Sync’s e-ink display like it’s a sheet of paper. (Unlike a sheet of paper and because of the current limits of the technology, you’re writing white-on-black instead of black-on-white. Improv Electronics says they’re working on changing that.) When you’re done with a page, you can save it to your Boogie Board Sync’s memory and sync your work to the Boogie Board app on your phone or computer.

Syncing your work to the Boogie Board app is the only way you can view a page once it has been saved and cleared off the screen. This is a technical limitation inherent in the type of display technology these devices use. It’s not terribly inconvenient, as I almost always have my iPhone with me, so I can always flip through my recent notes there.

You can also easily set your app up to automatically dump all of your Boogie Board notes into a dedicated folder on Evernote, essentially creating a virtual Moleskine that you can access from anywhere.

Trying out new technology is often difficult—just dabbling in something new is often a guarantee that you’ll end up clinging to the old out of inertia. So when my Boogie Board arrived, I told myself that I’d give it a fair shot by putting my Moleskine away and going a full week using the Boogie Board 100% in place of my normal legal pads and notebooks.

A month later I still haven’t touched a legal pad or a Moleskine again. I haven’t felt like I’m this deep into the future since the first time I used an iPhone.

What’s Great About the Boogie Board?

When I first took the Sync out of its box, I thought that the form factor would bother me: The bezel seemed larger than it needed to be and its gentle curves could have risked making it unsuitable for professional settings. But it turns out that when you hold the device one-handed, the scalloped bezel hugs your palm and arm like a painter’s pallet. This frees you from the need to either have a stiff-backed notebook or else always be near a flat surface to write or sketch. Jotting notes in bed or doing quick sketches on an elevator has become easy and comfortable.

Writing on a Boogie Board Sync is a really tactile experience, albeit slightly smoother than pen on paper, somewhat like using a ballpoint pen on an acetate. Because you are making strokes on the page through a physical process rather than an electronic one, the page is perfectly responsive to your pen: Your strokes get heavier and thicker as you increase pressure. Unlike with the host of handwriting apps on the iPhone and iPad, there is no lag between making the stroke and having it appear on the screen.

Anyone who cherishes the physical sensation of pen on paper (or who cares about the fact that writing longhand engages your brain differently than typing does) should have no problem using this. I’m a staunch pen-and-paper user—and had even switched to fountain pens in the year leading up to trying out the Boogie Board—but I was quickly sold on the experience of writing on a Boogie Board.

Having that ongoing archive of all of my notes that’s not restricted by the notebook’s page count is a dream come true. And at only $80 on Amazon, the Boogie Board is already well on its way to paying for itself. Even if I didn’t value the time I spend looking for my current notebook amidst a stack of used ones and looking through older notebooks to find a particular note, I’d make up the $80 in just a couple months by no longer buying Moleskines, pens and legal pads.

Syncing and Evernote Implementation: A Mixed Bag

Evernote is good enough at doing a lot of things, but the only thing Evernote is actually great at is holding on to a whole bunch of stuff and letting you get to it from anywhere. The process of actually entering, categorizing, tagging and sorting through all of that stuff can be a chore.

The most visible genius of the Boogie Board Sync is the freedom it offers through its great pen-on-e-ink interface. But just as genius is the way the Boogie Board Sync leverages that interface to take advantage of Evernote’s biggest strength without subjecting you to some of Evernote’s biggest weaknesses. By allowing you to still act like you’re using pen on paper, the Boogie Board doesn’t force you to adapt to a whole new way of producing and storing information. Digital technology is finally adapting to you, rather than asking you to adapt to it.

The Boogie Board Sync’s sync system is good when it should be great. The device allows you to automatically download your sketches and notes to your computer or smartphone and then automatically dump the downloaded pages into Evernote, but you need to keep the Boogie Board App open for those processes to run. The option to run all of those processes in the background rather than staying parked on the Boogie Board app would be an improvement. An option to streamline the process even further and save storage space by having the sync app skip local storage and copy the files on my Boogie Board straight into Evernote would be even better.

But what would really make the Boogie Board Sync a must-have for everyone who has been reluctant to loosen their grip on pen and paper would be grouping pages written in quick succession into single notes when uploading to Evernote. At the moment, your Boogie Board pages all go into the same notebook, but each page is its own note within that notebook. For students taking notes in class, professionals hopping from meeting to meeting or journalers scribbling down their thoughts on a subway ride, lumping together pages produced in quick succession would probably save time and stress. Adding this clock functionality could mean adding hardware as well as firmware, which could mean increasing the price or shortening its week-long battery life, but that extra little courtesy to the user could go a long way toward building good will.

The Verdict

The Boogie Board doesn’t need to be in everybody’s hands yet, but it should at least be on everybody’s radar.

I’ve been using mine for a month to journal, take notes at meetings, sketch design concepts and conduct interviews. Every time I pull it out, I get the same reaction: “What is that?” No one who has seen it has heard of it before. That needs to change.

Techies, productivity nerds, journaling fanatics and creative professionals: This device is ready to go and will suit your needs. I can’t see any reason for you to not have already placed an order for one. This is potentially a game-changer for you—and at the very least it’s already a paper-saver.

We’ve always known that smart pens and Evernote’s branded Moleskine are really just half-measures in our attempts to marry the best parts of analogue and digital, but the Boogie Board Sync finally gives us something better to measure them against. This should be the foundation for the way people bridge digital convenience and analogue flexibility.

Improv Electronics has plainly been refining the idea behind its Boogie Boards over several iterations. It has improved rapidly, and I’m excited about the direction in which they are moving. In just four years, Boogie Boards have gone from glorified Etch-a-Sketches to the gift from the future that is the Boogie Board Sync. Their ambitions for the technology are clearly aimed in the right direction—we just don’t get much articulation of their long-term goals for the technology from any of their marketing or PR.

I’ll probably do another post taking a look at the way they describe their products publicly versus messaging that would position them for faster adoption some time soon. In the mean time, though, here’s hoping Improv Electronics can step up their marketing and PR, because you really shouldn’t have needed me to explain what something this good is.

You may recognize her as a very attractive woman. Just posting this image is probably giving some impressionable readers undeserved body image issues.

This is Captain America: The Winter Soldier:

You may recognize it as a movie about a spy who really likes America fighting against…um…a soldier? Who really likes winter?

This is what Scarlett Johansson apparently needs to look like in order to promote Captain America: The Winter Soldier:

Image courtesy who the heck cares? It’s free publicity for their movie and that is exactly what they wanted when they put this image online.

The question isn’t, “What the heck is wrong with that woman’s waist?,” because by now we all know the answer to that. The question now is, “Who the heck really said, ‘A woman who probably has a team of full-time employees training her to keep her body looking a specific way doesn’t give people an unrealistic enough expectation of a woman’s body, so let’s just puppet warp her midsection all to hell!’?”

As a child, Danny was beaten by his alcoholic father, who then locked him and his mother in an empty hotel secluded in the Colorado Rockies. For months, Danny and his mother suffered horrific threats. They were forced to view violent, sexual and torturous images. Repeatedly. Nearly continuously. And after every means of communication with or access to the outside world was cut off and there was no longer any hope of outside intervention, Danny’s father attempted to kill his wife and child with a hammer.

But when I began reading Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s long-gestating sequel to The Shining, and I began reading about Dan Torrance’s dissolute adulthood, I started to cry. I didn’t realize until this weekend just how badly I had wanted the little boy from The Shining to be okay, how hard I had hoped over the last seventeen years that the same psychic gift that allowed Danny to survive that horrible winter in the Overlook Hotel would also offer him the emotional and psychological resources to recover from it.

Instead, Doctor Sleep shows us an adult Dan discovering that drugs and alcohol don’t just help him bury his memories—they also help him tamp down his psychic gift and shut himself off from the world. Reading the new book’s opening chapters and watching Dan circle the drain, committing as much violence against his body and his future as his father ever did against his mind, my heart sank.

But the book goes on, and as it does, so does Dan’s life. He finds Alcoholics Anonymous, stops drifting, and, in a plot thread that provides some of the book’s most lyrical and humane moments, earns the book’s titular moniker while working at a New England hospice.

I mention lyrical and humane moments. At their worst, King’s hordes of imitators resort to schlocky shock-horror to get a reaction from their audience, pummeling the reader with violence for violence’s sake. But King himself has, believe it or not, always excelled at well-observed human moments. We all have split-second thoughts that we would never want to share—moments of anger, disgust, self-aggrandizement, lust and condescension to which we’d never admit. King’s talent for finding those fleeting thoughts, diving into them, exploring them in depth is unparalleled in popular fiction. (Maybe even in literary fiction.) And at his best, the supernatural elements of King’s stories have always served as our entry point into exploring very real, very present anxieties that plague our modern life.

I’m pleased to say that, despite the body-swapping and the roving horde of psychic vampires, Doctor Sleep belongs in the rolls of King’s best.

The book is filled with what seem at first to be (somewhat clumsy) artistic flourishes, like the almost on-the-nose metaphor of a young Danny learning to bottle up his demons. In other places, King seems to be giving his audience a sly wink: A young girl’s habit of rubbing her mouth only seems justified as an in-joke for those of us who remember Dan’s father in detail because we grew up squeezing our copies of The Shining hard enough to leave finger dents in the pages.

But most of what I thought was clumsy in the first half turn into important plot points later in the book. (Spoiler in white text: Adult Dan learning to release those demons and be rid of them is key to the final resolution of the plot.) And even the parallels that looked like in-jokes turn out to matter in the world of the story, too.

King sometimes has a tendency to contort narratives into happy endings that feel forced. With a book like this, that seems inevitable: Despite the horror of the story, forty years of readers have grown to love The Shining. The tendency to let all of that good will seep into the fabric of the sequel must have been incredibly insidious. But by the time Doctor Sleep crescendoes on the site of the old Overlook hotel where The Shining took place, that one big, heart-warming plot twist that felt too convenient by half one hundred pages earlier actually feels earned twice over. Maybe it was just the decades of good will I have built up for the property, but I reached the end satisfied.

As I finished the book, I couldn’t help but think of the beautifully animated interlude in the middle of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows about three young men who struggle to come to terms with the reality of death. After all these years, Danny’s life is complete, and we can bid farewell to the ghosts of the Overlook, waving to them the way one waves off an old friend.